Many oil field reservoirs contain hydrocarbons which are located in producing zones having insufficient pressure to drive the hydrocarbons to the surface. Only small amounts of hydrocarbons can be recovered without assistance. The literature is replete with methods of stimulating hydrocarbon recovery from oil field reservoirs suffering from such deficiencies. For example, a water drive injected at an injection well forces the hydrocarbons toward the production wells. However, this does not always greatly increase the recovery and is limited to areas where water is available. Chemical flooding increases the recovery of hydrocarbons but it is extremely expensive and suffers from the logistical problems of transportating the large amounts of chemicals to the remote oil fields. Natural gas has been proposed as a drive fluid, however, it is only miscible with the inplace hydrocarbons in high pressure fields. This limits its economic use to high pressure fields and areas where cheap natural gas is available.
Thus, it would be highly desirable to have a process which can use natural gas in low pressure hydrocarbon reservoirs. It would also be desirable to have a process which can be used in previously water flooded oil fields to further enhance the recovery of hydrocarbons. Furthermore, it would be desirable to have a process which maximizes the use of any upgraded hydrocarbon components derived from the natural gas.